


when I was a boy

by Guinevak



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Agender Character, Gen, Gender Identity, Genderqueer Character, Identity Issues, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, POV Second Person, Therapy, WIP Amnesty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 13:33:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14021337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guinevak/pseuds/Guinevak
Summary: Or, "The Winter Soldier vs. Personal Pronouns".





	when I was a boy

**Author's Note:**

> Look I just... have a lot of feelings about Bucky and gender and identity, and TiamatsChild put the idea of agender!TWS into my head and it wouldn't leave, and basically this is The One Where Bucky prefers "it" for weird convoluted reasons of its own and finds it affirming rather than dehumanizing and Steve doesn't quite know what to do with that fact--
> 
> Only I broke up with Marvel and I decided I wasn't qualified or motivated to finish it, so this is all there is.

The doctor is a woman, or at least you think she is. They asked you if you would be more comfortable talking to a man or a woman, and you said it didn't matter, and they gave you to Sayers, Leona: late forties, curly dark hair, round face, high-heeled shoes. She sits across the room with a tablet in her lap, and since the first meeting she doesn't react when your face stops working, which is helpful.

"How are things?" she says.

"I think I scared him," you say after a minute.

This is another way in which Sayers is helpful: she doesn't ask who you're talking about when you say "him", the pronoun unadorned. How did you never realize how complicated that word was?

"What makes you think that?" she says.

Precision is important. You rephrase: "I scared him, yesterday. In—"

You break off. She waits.

 _In the head, not in the body,_ you want to say, but you aren't sure that's right. Might be backwards. Might be gibberish. Words don't always come out right. Thoughts don't always link up. Sometimes it makes you furiously angry, because you remember, you can _remember_ it working, but you can't remember how.

You used to be good at this.

Sayers doesn't hurry you, which is also helpful, because you can't think faster than this. You've tried. Eventually you say, "Not a threat."

She thinks that over. "So, scared, but not scared of you."

"Yes. —No." That's not right either.

"Or for you?"

"Maybe?" The idea is both reasonable and alien. Another thing that doesn't seem like it should apply to you. _For you_. Actions are for you, verbs, infinitives; for you to carry out. Other things... you aren't sure.

Your short term memory is still for shit, but the parts of that conversation that stuck in your brain are clear. It takes a moment to sort them into order.

"It was going pretty good, yesterday." _It_ , you think: another, even smaller word you underestimated. "I said... something..." You have an idea of what sort of thing it was, vague as a shadow; you thought it was funny, at the time, and— "And he said, that's not funny. And I said, sorry." _Jeez_ , you remember adding, in your head. Or you don't remember, but you think you must have. The thought feels recently used. "And he said — I thought he was angry, he said, you're a person. And I told him I knew that," because you do know it, half the time you even believe it. You're not that broken, not now. You have a face and a name and there are whole minutes at a stretch when that doesn't terrify you.

"Was he angry?" Sayers asks.

"No, I think he was scared I was, was—" Your hand flexes, scattering reflections, groping for the word.

"Having a setback," she supplies, and that's close enough, so you nod. You're not supposed to say _malfunctioning_ , although that's often how you feel.

"But you weren't?"

"I don't know," you say.

The thing is, you're fucked up in a lot of ways, and one of those ways is that you can't always tell what they are. Sometimes you're frightened by impulses that Sayers calls 'pretty normal', or 'probably healthy'. Sometimes what seems like a dangerous delusion is just a memory, dredged to the surface, half-rotted and waterlogged with time.

Then there are times like this.

You look up with a conscious effort. Eye contact. You do it because Sayers will not ask you to, will not tell you to, will not enforce compliance; you have to do it yourself. You want her to know that you understand that.

* * *

"I remember," you say, which is the best way to begin, usually. It reassures him: you are not lost, you are not having a setback, you are not malfunctioning. It reassures you: the things that remain in your head are yours. Mostly. Most days. "I remember being— But it's like. You know how you have dreams, sometimes? And in the dreams you're somebody else, kind of."

"Yeah." An unhappy _yeah_.

"Like. You're a little kid in the dream, or you're a woman, or a space alien, or Little Bo Peep, whatever."

"Maybe _you're_ Little Bo Peep—"

He grins; you grin. That still works.

"Whatever," you say. "Doesn't matter. You don't even notice until you wake up and think, what the hell, I'm not a space alien after all."

The two of you sit in silence while he thinks that over. The person you were could have kept up with those thoughts, maybe; figured out what he's going to say next and thought of an answer for it. If you were the person you were, you wouldn't be having this discussion. You would still be the self in the dream.

"Okay," he says after a minute. "I guess I can see that."

You nod.

Back to the drawing board.

* * *

What you have is a sense memory, like the recollection of a dream. You can't remember the details, waking, or the reasons it made sense; only the impressions. 

It was a long time ago. But it is less a matter of time, you think sometimes, and more like something that happened in another world, in another consciousness, where the laws of causality are not the same. 

You are not the same. You are not what you were: you have been processed, edited, converted, transformed; you have been irreversibly upgraded. This action, as the computer is always telling you, cannot be undone.

You look at the facts through the dream-sense like a colored filter, to try and recapture how things looked, from inside that young man's mind: colors, shapes, sensations in the heart you don't fully recognize. Some that you do, but tinted differently. Relief was a brighter thing, you think. Anger was a fire that burned clean. Fear was a cold that struck into you, instead of rising out of your bones. You piece them together, under the filter. You are not sure. It's a delicate operation, requires coordination that your cinder of a brain can't quite manage. Things slip out of alignment, you lose the progress you've made. You have to start over, from the beginning.

You were a lot of things, then.

* * *

“I wasn’t, though,” you try. “Not like you were.”

He laughs shortly, a contained explosion. “Like I was?”

“You were always. Definite.” Your hands move, trying to show the outlines of him.

“Had to be.” The set of that angular jaw, sharp and painful. “Nobody was gonna take my word for it.”

It goes deep, that bitterness; you feel it resonate, down underwater. It feels true even though it makes no sense. Anyone could see by the way he held himself, the flinty sharp edges of him, big hands and bullfrog croak and bloody-minded obstinacy. Couldn’t they? Whereas you—

Something in you was melting-soft, you think. You are not sure whether it still is. Maybe it melted away entirely, ran out of you and left a hollow space. Maybe it was the first place you broke. But it was there, once.

* * *

Sayers folds her hands in her lap. They are symmetrical, square-trimmed nails polished pink like seashells. “Do you think of yourself as ‘it’?”

Her voice is calm, serious. After a moment you nod, warily.

“Why is that?”

 _Why is that_. You echo the words soundlessly, trying to pin them in place. “I—” _Why is that?_ “Because—?”

She lets you grapple with it for a minute, and then prompts you: “Because…”

“Because it’s— because I—” _Why_. Why? “I don’t know.”

The doctor nods slowly. “But you think of yourself as a person?”

“—Yes.” You flinch at the wobble in your voice.

“It’s okay. There’s not a wrong answer.”

There is, there is, there is, but you swallow it down, and say more firmly, “Yes.”

 


End file.
